


Elegy

by Bees_and_Ink



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon x OC but doesn’t change story, Character Death, Denial, Did I mention spoilers?, F/M, FWB mention, Grief/Mourning, Replica research, Spoilers, confused feelings all around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 19:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19116298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bees_and_Ink/pseuds/Bees_and_Ink
Summary: When they said he was dead, Octavia laughed.





	Elegy

When they said Van was dead, Octavia laughed.

She laughed because it was such a pathetic, poor, _absurd_ attempt at a joke, like saying that the sun had vanished, or that water was red and blood clear.

Vandesdelca, _”the one who would seize glory.”_ No, he can’t be dead. Not in the _can’t_ that widows howl over their husband’s caskets, a lament of despair and misery and a touch of vain hope, but in the sense of “physically impossible.” He was the man who was going to change the world, who already gripped it in the palm of his hand, who sought to prove to Yulia that she was wrong. 

He was the one who was going to destroy the Score.

He was the one who was bound to it more than anyone else.

But then the official reports steadily filtered in from Malkuth, Kimlasca, even Daath. _Lost_ , they purred from their pages, _at the Absorption Gate._ Fallen into the core of the world. Firsthand accounts from the group who had sought out to kill him. Nothing but his sword left behind.

 _“I have a sword for you,”_ she could practically hear his throaty chuckle in her ear, that powerful timbre that could make Auldrant itself tremble. That **would** make it tremble.

He was just _here_ , for Yulia’s sake! With his bright blue eyes flecked with green, so clear and focused and stormy all at once. With the hair on his chin brushing the junction of her neck and shoulder. With that self-assured smile of his that she might have been growing just a bit too fond of, caught in the same snare as Legretta. With his frequent visits to Belkend that she convinced herself he was coming because of her company alone, even though deep down, she knew better. She wasn’t a fool.

It was a cruel kind of limbo to love a man whose eyes were always looking to the future, and never at the people of the present. Van employed the use of others as he needed them: replica researcher, seventh fonist, soldier, doctor, subordinate, pleasure-giver, teacher, assistant, informant. He wouldn’t marry — Octavia couldn’t see him with a wife, anyway — nor have any children. Changing the world, killing Lorelei was his legacy, all he intended to leave behind, and something he was abundantly at peace with, like the epiphany she had seen on soldiers’ faces moments before their deaths. Acceptance. Making the most of what they had left. Learning to be satisfied with that or risking madness.

All of that had been their mutual understanding from the beginning, against her desk after the other researchers had gone home (bruising his fingerprints into her skin) when they went back to her apartment (her thighs cradling his hips), and every time after that. They were nothing more than that to one another. She kept his bed warm and did her proper job as a researcher, while he would fund her work, collect the data, bring an end to the planet’s memory once and for all. But she had never for a moment considered after handing him the newest replica information, her cheagle watching them both wide-eyed and innocent yet all-knowing from her desk, watching his broad frame stride away as he always did that it would be the last...

Eternal life would be theirs, she just knew it. Replicas would be able to retain the memories of their originals despite the end of the planet’s. That way, there would never be another Hod, no more predestiny. They would be free.

But if boss and subordinate, someone for a quick fuck to manage the stress was all they were to one another, a means of getting what they both wanted, then what was with this ache in her breast? The jabbing pain in her stomach like the twist of a dagger buried there? Or this painful, chokehold around her throat? Was she ill? Was she a fool after all?

Octavia buried her head in her hands as she sat at her desk, alone in her apartment office, the silence deafening. They all stared at her from their pages — the winged sword of Kimlasca, the harp of Malkuth, the tuning fork of the Order — all proclaiming the same lie, words as merciless and biting as stone. He was dead. Gone. Never coming back.

But as she opened her mouth to laugh, she thought she heard someone sob a name.

**Author's Note:**

> Octavia belongs to me, so please don’t claim her as your own!


End file.
